Hacking Hard drive, slow seek time (usb loaders)

[Geeman]

I softmodded my Wii using the guide here. All perfect.

http://gbatemp.net/t171901-modify-any-wii-4-3-below

I purchase a western digital elements 500gb drive today and install a game (Resident Evil 0 Archives) onto it using WBFS Manager. I load up USB Loader GX and run the game, loads perfectly. I start to play and then realise something is up 5 seconds in. If you have ever played a Resident Evil game you will know how when loading a new area for you to walk into takes a split second, on my game it took a good 2 seconds extra to load the next area. At first I thought it was just the game but then I go back to the usb loader gx menu and notice that it even hangs for an extra second or two before being controllable again.

I then try Configurable USB loader (v60) and then loaded game up. I go to the same area and magically it did not hang. I thought I had fixed it but then going back into the area it hanged again for a split second. It seems random for when it will take a bit longer to load.

I am hoping this is a software issue with the cios or ios I have installed from the guide above and an update to one of these will fix it. I have no trouble running stuff from sd card (ran snes 9x gx with no trouble).

My drive is set up to be a 460GB WBFS partition and the other 20 GB is a FAT32 partition, set to 32k clusters (as instructed).

The drive seems to have the performance needed. I copied the 3.9 GB iso to it in a little over 2 minutes.

 

[dmonkey21]

I softmodded my Wii using the guide here. All perfect.

http://gbatemp.net/t171901-modify-any-wii-4-3-below

I purchase a western digital elements 500gb drive today and install a game (Resident Evil 0 Archives) onto it using WBFS Manager. I load up USB Loader GX and run the game, loads perfectly. I start to play and then realise something is up 5 seconds in. If you have ever played a Resident Evil game you will know how when loading a new area for you to walk into takes a split second, on my game it took a good 2 seconds extra to load the next area. At first I thought it was just the game but then I go back to the usb loader gx menu and notice that it even hangs for an extra second or two before being controllable again.

I then try Configurable USB loader (v60) and then loaded game up. I go to the same area and magically it did not hang. I thought I had fixed it but then going back into the area it hanged again for a split second. It seems random for when it will take a bit longer to load.

I am hoping this is a software issue with the cios or ios I have installed from the guide above and an update to one of these will fix it. I have no trouble running stuff from sd card (ran snes 9x gx with no trouble).

My drive is set up to be a 460GB WBFS partition and the other 20 GB is a FAT32 partition, set to 32k clusters (as instructed).

The drive seems to have the performance needed. I copied the 3.9 GB iso to it in a little over 2 minutes.

Have you played that EXACT resident evil game on disc before? Just because a series generally has short load times in no way means that every game in a series has short load times. Hell, compared to all Nintendos past generations of consoles the Wii in general has the slowest load times.

SD card speeds are generally faster than HDD (depending on the card's speed class, but in general flash memory should load faster), so being able to load emulators from SD isn't a good comparison.

Also, copying a game to your drive would only tell you the write speed for your drive, not the read speed.

Finally, since you say only USBLoader GX had the pause in menu loading, I'd say that is because of the loader, as I've had problems with that USB Loader in the past too.

Since it doesn't sound like you have much basis for thinking your drive is being accessed too slowly (no offence), I would recommend copying a legitimate Wii title to your drive and comparing the speed it runs from USB to how it runs from the disc. I recommend using a legit game because to the best of my knowledge software mods can only produce 3X disc speeds whereas legitimate games will run at 6X.

 

[Geeman]

Hey. Yeah I have played that game on disc before, about 50 times completed. I actually used to have some speedrun world records for the re games so I know the game inside out.

I know about SD being faster but it was to just show that my Wii was not at fault for the access time and that the softmod had been done correctly. Same thing about the hard drive read/write. IMO, it establishes a baseline for basic troubleshooting. If say the copy took half an hour then I could possibly blame the drive for the slow loading as the read was also bad. Just my way of solving problems.

As for the loader, CFG also had this problem when on the main menu selecting a game/options but nowhere as bad as GX.

I thought the 3x thing was only for disc backups? My mistake.

After asking around I might aswell try WiiFlow and try the loaders each using different cIOS. I was also instructed to downgrade from rev 20 of the 249 to rev 17 (base 38). Wise move?

 

[harmor]

Try rev20 with IOS56 as the base.

 

[dmonkey21]

Hey. Yeah I have played that game on disc before, about 50 times completed. I actually used to have some speedrun world records for the re games so I know the game inside out.

I know about SD being faster but it was to just show that my Wii was not at fault for the access time and that the softmod had been done correctly. Same thing about the hard drive read/write. IMO, it establishes a baseline for basic troubleshooting. If say the copy took half an hour then I could possibly blame the drive for the slow loading as the read was also bad. Just my way of solving problems.

As for the loader, CFG also had this problem when on the main menu selecting a game/options but nowhere as bad as GX.

I thought the 3x thing was only for disc backups? My mistake.

After asking around I might aswell try WiiFlow and try the loaders each using different cIOS. I was also instructed to downgrade from rev 20 of the 249 to rev 17 (base 38). Wise move?

Oh ok just making sure. Ya 3x is only for disc backups USB should be faster than discs even running at 6x (at least in my experience). I'm not sure about switching to rev17. Personally, I use rev17 as 249 and rev20 base 58 (or 56? I'm not entirely sure I use the base that WiiPower(or was it WiiCrazy?) recommended in that thread when rev20 was first released lol) The only reason I use rev17 is for NAND emulation in TriiForce, I believe rev20 should be better for USB Loading though, especially because it lets you set a base IOS. I think rev17 is only available as base 38.

 

[Geeman]

Tried afew combinations of loaders and IOS. I actually got best performance using 250........

If I am going to install rev17 for testing, I guess I uninstall the rev20 wad and then install rev17 in it's place? Or can I have more than one installed?

 

[harmor]

Tried afew combinations of loaders and IOS. I actually got best performance using 250........

If I am going to install rev17 for testing, I guess I uninstall the rev20 wad and then install rev17 in it's place? Or can I have more than one installed?

When downgrading cIOS's I always delete the IOS slots (249 and 250) for Waninkoko's cIOS)
Install rev17 first then install rev20 (No not use slot 249 as rev17 is using it).

If you aren't interested in Triiforce you can install rev19. I used IOS57 as the base.

 

[Slimmmmmm]

Defrag your hdd.

 

[petspeed]

Defrag a WBFS partition ?

 

[harmor]

Defrag a WBFS partition ?

Wii Backup Manager has "fix free block table" which is sort of like defrag.

 

[Geeman]

So I installed rev17 and what a difference. Almost all of the loading issues are gone except for two distinct ones which seem to go away (or not as noticable) when I use wiiflow 222 and not wiiflow 249.

A quick log then.

1. rev17 works better than what I had installed.
2. The rev20 you asked me to run was abit better but not on the same level as rev17. More loading issues.
3. WiiFlow on 222 seemed better than the 249 version for loading.
4. GX, WiiFlow, CfgUSB all suffer from two loading issues. When you have 0 bullets and spam y to combine ammo, takes an extra second or two to open up item menu. Other instances of opening up item menu are fine. I also checked this against my original disc to make sure. Issue does not happen when playing from disc. The other is when the second dog comes through the window when you load a new area.

Edit - I have just tried loads of different settings and those same problems are popping up. I've tried different USB loaders, every cios and still the same. I honestly think it may be a bug in the cios since it is only certain loading areas. Any patches/options in the usb loaders I can try to fix these?

2nd edit - OK. Turns out it is a bug in the cios. The PAL game has loading issues but the NTSC loading issues are non existent. Using 222 (v5) and Cfg Loader.